LIFE TERM FOR N.S. MALL PLOT.
HALIFAX• A Chicago-area woman who came to Halifax to go on a planned Valentine’s Day shooting rampage at a mall has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for a decade.
American Lindsay Souvannarath pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit murder in a plan she concocted with a young Halifax man that would have seen them open fire at the Halifax Shopping Centre food court in February 2015.
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski told the court Friday she is and will remain a danger to public safety.
The judge said Souvannarath has not expressed remorse for her murderous plot, nor has she renounced her ideological motivations for the conspiracy.
In his decision, he called her prospects for rehabilitation “very questionable” and said she needs to be separated from society until concerns can be addressed.
Rosinski said he is satisfied that had the plot not been interrupted by an anonymous tip and the quick actions of police — her coconspirator, James Gamble, killed himself as police surrounded his home — the plan would have been carried out.
“Coming upon unsuspecting members of the public at the mall that day, what carnage would they have inflicted with a 16-gauge shotgun with 23 shells; a .308 calibre lever-action rifle with 13 shells; and a knife to finish off the wounded?”
The judge added: “Ms. Souvannarath’s intention was to kill more than the 13 people who suffered that fate at the Columbine High School shooting,” he wrote, referring to her obsession with the massacre in Littleton, Colo.
Kate Battan, the lead investigator of the 1999 shooting who wrote a report for the Crown highlighting parallels between the school shooting and this case, called it “ironic” that Friday’s sentencing took place on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
“My impression is that they were all in and this was not a joke,” she said in an interview. “At some point this became real, this was going to happen.”
The judge shared that view, telling the court that the “plan had been set in motion” as soon as Souvannarath boarded a plane for Halifax.
The spectre of shooters opening fire in a busy mall threatened thousands of shoppers and workers and unsettled the city for months.
In fact, Rosinski cited the intention to create mass panic and undermine the community’s sense of security as an aggravating factor.